Are you thinking about using email marketing in your marketing strategy?

This blog post covers four types of email marketing strategies and how you can use them to grow your business:

E-Newsletter- An Email Newsletter (E-Newsletter) is an email created in a newsletter format and emailed to a list of your email contacts who have opted-in to receive information from you on a consistent basis (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.). There are many variations of e-newsletters including plain text e-newsletters or html e-newsletters. The look and feel of your e-newsletter is up to you, but it should be consistent with your brand. Although the look and feel of the e-newsletters will vary for each company, most of the time there are key components included in an e-newsletter. The components usually include the following information in some way:

Intro– An introduction from the company or person who publishes the newsletter. The intro is the lead into the email and usually includes a brief update and then leads into the rest of the newsletter

Article/Blog Post Preview– Many e-newsletters link to the company’s recent blog post which covers the topic in more detail, so the first few sentences or paragraph of the blog is placed in the e-newsletter and the reader would have to click on a link in the email to read the entire article or blog post

Event Announcement– Many companies choose to include any announcements of upcoming events in the e-newsletter. These events could be live in-person events including conferences, seminars, workshops, etc. or online events like webinars or teleseminars. This will be included in the e-newsletter with a link to the event page where people can register for the event.

Special Promotions- This could be promotions from your company of promotions from partner companies. The promotion offer is listed and the reader can click on the banner or link to get additional information. The link usually takes the reader to a sales/promotional page to get more information regarding the special offer

Inspirational Quotes– These are popular and many companies like to include them in their e-newsletter

Testimonials- Many companies like to showcase testimonials in their newsletters because it is a great way to show your audience why people love your product or service and people tend to look favorably on testimonials.

Videos– A link to a video is great to include in an e-newsletter. If you have a company video or a video that your audience would find useful, you can include the video image and link to the actual video in the e-newsletter.

E-Newsletter Tips:

Be sure that the content in your e-newsletter is 80% educational/entertaining and 20% promotional.

Limit the information to no more than four topics for each newsletter.

Keep the e-newsletter clear and concise and make sure that the information does not appear cluttered to the reader.

Have a strong call to action at the end of each section (i.e. “click here to read more…” “click here for more information” “sign-up today” etc. )

Promotional Emails– The specific purpose of this email is to promote ONE thing. This could be an event, a special company promotion, etc. You want the information to stand out, so you create a specific email dedicated to just this one topic. This is also known as a stand-alone email. This type of email is great to use if you have one topic or you want your audience to focus on one thing. The one thing could have several parts, but the email itself focuses on only one topic. For example, if you are having a special sale and you want to focus your readers’ attention on the special sale, although you may have several items on sale, the focus of the email is the one topic of the sale. Promotional Email Tips:

Be sure to focus on only one topic

Have a strong call to action at the end of the email (i.e. “buy now” “limited time” “click here for more information” “sign-up today” etc. )

Make sure you are clear on what you want your reader to do

Autoresponder– An Autoresponder Email is a series of emails that is sent to a person when they sign-up for something. This could be when they sign-up to join your email list, when they sign-up to get a free download, when they sign-up for a webinar etc. The action of signing up and therefore opting into the list creates an automatic response (or autoresponder) that is a series of emails that are sent to the individual over a period of time. Autoresponders are great because you can set it and forget it. Once you create the series any time someone opts into that particular list, he or she will receive the emails automatically and you only had to create it once! AutoResponder Tips:

Make each email in the series timely and relevant

Provide valuable information before you promote your product or service

In a series of 4 emails, 3 should be informative and educational and the 4th one can be a promotion (always provide value first)

Drip Campaigns– Drip campaigns are very similar to autoresponders in that they are a series of emails. The difference is that a drip campaign does not have to be initiated by a person opting in. You can create a campaign for a specific group of people already on your email list and drip them information over a period of time. Drip campaigns are great to promote an event or a special company promotion to your entire list or a portion of your email list. Similar to the autoresponders, once you create the emails you just set it and forget it as the series of emails will be dripped out to your list over a period of time Drip Campaign Tips:

Make each email in the series timely and relevant

Make sure each email has a strong call to action

Are you using any of these email strategies? If not, what other email marketing strategies are you using?